US Correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday wheeled out – for roughly the 47th time – his familiar shopworn narrative of having halted a potential nuclear war between India and Pakistan, complaining that he was deserving of a Nobel Prize for stopping this and seven other conflicts but, alas, he was not going to get it.In yet another speech that critics increasingly characterize as “rambling” and “batshit crazy,” this time to US generals and commanders summoned to the Pentagon from across the world to inform them of a new war doctrine, Trump recycled his claim that he called leaders of both India and Pakistan to warn he would not trade with them if they did not stop fighting, and they purportedly obliged.Trump also praised Pakistan’s prime minister and “the field marshal,” whose name he never mentions or does not seem to remember, claiming they thanked him during a White House meeting last week for saving millions and millions of lives.“The prime minister of Pakistan was here along with the field marshal, who’s a very important guy in Pakistan…and he said President Trump saved millions and millions of lives… I was very honoured…I loved the way he said it,” Trump said.He also rehashed his claim of downed aeroplanes (seven this time) without any clarity on which country’s jets they were and the source of his information. Pakistani commentators have eagerly embraced this number to claim they were all Indian jets. Pakistan’s defence minister Khwaja Asif, when asked for evidence on Western TV interviews, has comically responded, “It is all over social media.”While Indian military leaders have acknowledged they have lost some planes and international military analysts have said at least one Indian Rafale jet may have been hit during the four-day conflict, no one really knows where Trump is pulling the number seven from (up from six a few days ago). India has said it took out at least six Pakistani planes, besides bombing and rendering a dozen Pakistani airbases and airfields inoperable, releasing satellite images to show the damage. Pakistan has produced no evidence to back its claims. The US President, who has candidly expressed his admiration for strongmen and military dictators, is now completely in thrall of Pakistan’s Field Marshal and his associate Prime Minister in an arrangement the country’s defence minister described as a “hybrid model” ruling Pakistan. In remarks earlier at the White House, Trump also appreciated Pakistan’s support for his Middle-East peace proposals, saying, “The Prime Minister and Field Marshal from Pakistan were with us from the beginning. They’re incredible.”Pakistani commentators are overjoyed at the country’s return to centre stage after almost two decades in the wilderness, their social media timelines filled with taunts about India being sidelined and punished with tariffs. Some analysts, though, are leery about Pakistan returning to the US orbit again, only to be “pumped and dumped” as it has happened often in the past. They are also questioning Pakistan being drafted or co-opted into a US-engineered peace plan on the Palestinian issue that it has opposed in the past.“Pakistan has never before relied on the United States to this extent for resolving the Palestinian issue as it is doing now. The government will claim that it is adopting a joint stance with Islamic countries. It remains to be seen whether Pakistani public opinion accepts this or not,” Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, wrote on X.
